Análise da arquitetura judiciária portuguesa: as dimensões de reconhecimento, funcionalidade e acesso à justiça

Law in the semi-periphery: revisiting an ambitious theory in the light of recent Portuguese socio-legal research

“…Pioneer works were the dissertations of António Manuel Hespanha (1986a) on the structure of the Portuguese state in the seventeenth century – according to a sociologically inspired approach – and of Teresa Beleza (1990b) on the image of women in the Portuguese Criminal Code. More recent references touching the socio-legal field are the dissertations of Cristina Leston-Bandeira (2002) on recent changes in the role of the Portuguese parliament, addressing among other topics the conditions of law-making in Portugal; Manuela Ivone Cunha (2002) on a prison for women and on the way the network of connections between what happens in that prison and outside it causes the social exclusion not only of the inmates, but also of the community to which they belong; António Casimiro Ferreira (2005) on the treatment of individual and collective labour conflicts in Portugal, emphasising the lack of non-judicial mechanisms and the gap between the conflicts subject to judicial treatment and those effectively occurring at the workplace; Helena Machado (2007) on the handling by the Portuguese justice system of paternity research procedures, and on the way these procedures reinforce social norms on the sexual behaviour of women; João Pedroso (2011) on the effectiveness of the right to have access to law in family issues; Madalena Duarte (2011) on the social movements active in the field of environmental law; Susana Santos (2012) on the law-making process which led to the regulation of private radio stations in the period of normalisation between the Revolution and the country's joining the EC; Vera Duarte (2012) on female delinquency; Patrícia Branco (2013) on the architecture of the courts as revealing the changing status of courts as part of the state's apparatus, and of the relationship between courts and society; Sílvia Gomes (2013), comparing deviant behaviour across different immigrant communities; and João Paulo Dias (2014) on the role of Portuguese public prosecutors, in particular in helping ordinary people to access the courts.…”

Considering a different model for the Family and Children Courthouse Building. Reflections on the Portuguese experience

“…This is due to several reasons: firstly, family law is a special branch of law, with a precise technical and legal consistency (Marella and Marini 2014); and secondly, there is a particular interface between justice, space and court users in this legal field, where intimacy and authority play in an intricate interaction. 2 In fact, while responding to the children's needs and having to be family-sensitive, the courthouse facilities also have to communicate serious messages to abusive/neglectful parents and to juvenile offenders, as well as provide a comfortable and functional workplaces to court professionals and public areas to court users (Goltsman 1992, Branco 2015. Although in the last years more attention has been paid to the importance of customizing the court's spaces according to the specialization of this particular type of jurisdiction, in Portugal the standard continues to be the replication of a (roughly) unchanged architectural template, particularly in terms of the courtroom's layout, as well as the internal configuration of the courthouse building, more fit for other types of jurisdiction, especially the penal one.…”